


If I Told You Who I Once Was (Would You Hold My Hand?)

by GoodbyeonBadWolfBay, YourAverageAspiringAuthor



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Guess you could say this took a while, Internal Conflict, Internal Monologue, Nine months ago I lost a bet, Spoilers for Episode: s12e10 The Timeless Children, Suicidal Thoughts, The Vault (Doctor Who)
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-12-04
Updated: 2021-02-26
Packaged: 2021-03-10 01:08:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 8,651
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27875846
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GoodbyeonBadWolfBay/pseuds/GoodbyeonBadWolfBay, https://archiveofourown.org/users/YourAverageAspiringAuthor/pseuds/YourAverageAspiringAuthor
Summary: He hated himself. Truly hated every part of his being, more than he ever had before. His entire body was filled with so much rage. Not at her, never at her, but at the people who had caused his Doctor so much pain before she was even the equivalent of a teenager. At the people who had taken so much from her and given her nothing.
Relationships: The Doctor/The Master (Doctor Who), Thirteenth Doctor/The Master (Dhawan)
Comments: 3
Kudos: 23





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ThoughtsCascade](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ThoughtsCascade/gifts).



> I wrote the original version of this chapter nine months ago for a friend of mine. It's his birthday today. 
> 
> However, this fic was written with the help of a few very lovely people who I couldn't have done this without. You know who you are. Thank you so much.
> 
> Anyways, this is my take on the Master after having watched Timeless Children. Enjoy!

Why was it that pretending to be somebody the Master wasn’t was easier than admitting who he truly was? Than admitting _what_ he was? Why was delaying the inevitable easier than looking her in the eyes and telling her that everything she had ever known, everything _they_ had ever known, had been a lie? Why was it easier to lie to her than it was to free her from the mountain of lies she had already been living under?   
  
Why? _Why?_ **_Why?_**

_ Why was he trying? _ Why did he still want to save her from the hurt? Why was he afraid  _ for  _ her? Why were all of his nightmares about  _ her?  _ Why were his lives revolving around her? Why was he still pretending? Why did it matter if he was? He had certainly done more than his fair share of pretending throughout his lives - it wasn’t like this scenario was any different than the others had been.   
  
Oh, but it  _ was,  _ wasn’t it? This time, he was a pretty little human named O, trying his best to impress the Doctor while staying on Earth where he belonged. This time, the Master- O, he was clever, and he was charming, and he was  _ oh _ -so-selfless. O would gladly sacrifice his life for the Doctor if asked, and maybe that was something they had in common. The reasoning was drastically different, though. O wanted to prove himself to her, wanted to show that he was useful and that he was so much more than a pretty face.    
  
And he was, too. O was  _ brilliant. _ Knew exactly what questions to ask in any scenario he found himself in. Knew how to get the Doctor to say just what she wanted to say. O knew the right questions to ask to get her to ramble just so he’d see that gorgeous smile on her face, to distract her from her own thoughts for  _ just _ long enough. O wanted nothing more than to help lift the weight of the universe off her shoulders, and he knew it was working, even if he didn’t know  _ why _ it was working.    
  


The Master, however, knew why. The Master had spent far longer than he’d ever admit trying to one up the Doctor, trying to rekindle their friendship, trying to show her how he saw the universe. Koschei had spent so long trying to protect Theta, and he had never wanted to admit it.  
  
And now she’d never believe him if he did.  
  
She. The Master had to remind himself that the Doctor was a _she_ now. Most certainly a stolen idea from his last self, but not an unwelcome sight. Maybe the Master didn’t mean ‘she.’ Theta was gone. Theta Sigma and Koschei were dead, long since replaced with two old souls split apart by the sands of time, but a part of Koschei still remained in the Master’s hearts. Granted, that part had been masked by millennia of pain, yes, but the little boy who had tried his hardest to protect his best friend was still screaming inside the Master’s head. Even after years of seething hatred burning through his hearts like a wildfire, Koschei would still tear apart the universe to save his first love.   
  
He nearly had, too. When he looked into the Matrix and saw what they had done to his best friend, the Master had been filled with rage on a level he had _never_ known before. His blood had boiled over, eyes clouded in red as his hands were stained a deep crimson. The Master had killed. Over, and over, and over again, he had killed until there was no longer a single living example of the pain the Doctor had been put through. Except for him.  
  
Gallifrey had fallen that day. All of it; all because of him. All because of this incessantly impulsive body of his. Gallifrey had fallen to the rawest example of hatred, to a man who’s anger no Dalek could ever compare to. Gallifrey had fallen, all because a little boy named Koschei had sworn long ago that no harm would come to the person who owned his hearts. Gallifrey had fallen because of a promise.  
  
Maybe that was what had made O so genuine. Maybe that was what made O the perfect disguise- the impulsiveness. The need to protect her, to hold her close for fear of losing her, made him genuine. Maybe that was what had made O selfless: the fact that the Master had been so selfish throughout all of his lives. O was everything the Master was not, and he hated it because it _worked_. He hated that she loved O with both of her hearts after abandoning the Master without a second thought; hated that it only made him want to try _harder._   
  
Maybe he understood it, then. Maybe the Master understood some of the absurdly impulsive things humans did when they were around her. Maybe he understood why River had gotten so close to destroying the whole of space and time just to save the Doctor. Maybe he understood why the Doctor’s companions never listened when he told them to stay put. _Maybe_ the Master finally understood just how dangerous calling Theta his best friend had been. And maybe, just maybe, the Master understood why the Doctor kept her humans around.   
  
She clearly needed somebody to listen, to distract her from everything she had spent so long running from. Maybe it was time for her to stop running.

No. Not just yet. He still needed to work out a plan, to figure out how to tell her without making her collapse from the weight of her past on her shoulders. For now, she needed him.   
  
No, she needed _O._ She needed somebody who she trusted to _listen_ to her, which was just. _Another_ thing O was perfectly made to do.   
  
So O listened. He let her talk, and he butted in with questions every once in a while, and he watched the weight slowly slide off of her shoulders. Watched the tension in her body disappear the longer they talked. O pretended to be enamored with her while the Master was pretending he _wasn’t_ enamored with her. O questioned her without hesitation, let her ramble about things the Master knew far more about, and she loved every bit of it. Loved being able to answer his questions. She loved _him._   
  
Even if she didn’t love the Master, she still loved O. O was _perfect_ for her. He watched her intently, paid attention to her even when she wasn’t being clever, and he made her feel important. She ate it up, every last bit of it. Every reaction- the perplexed looks, the stupidly simple questions that Humans tended to ask, she loved them. 

It was fun, this game of theirs, and if he messed up? If the Master asked a question he knew she wouldn’t be able to answer? Well, O was smarter than even he realized. She congratulated him on every particularly difficult question he asked, told him he had earned a gold star despite having never actually given him one, and she had no idea just how difficult it really was to keep his little facade going. She had no idea how often the Master had to bite his tongue to keep himself from snarkily commenting on mistakes she had made while describing planets O would never see. The Doctor didn’t know how difficult it was to pretend to be  _ stupid. _

Maybe stupid was an exaggeration. O was especially smart, for a human, and he didn’t have to hide that. Not really. The Doctor liked the smarter ones, they made things interesting. At least, from what the Master had seen. There was, after all, only so much stupidity a Time Lord could take. Not that she was a Time Lord, but his point remained. The Master had done his research, spent far longer than was probably healthy thinking about what sort of Humans the Doctor had travelled with throughout her lives, all in the name of creating _O._   
  
Oh, and wasn’t he just so clever? Not only was the name absolutely amusing, but for his disguise to be working at MI6? For him to work for the UK’s department of _espionage?_ It made him giddy just to think about. Sure, the work was boring, but it was easy. Incredibly easy. Almost as easy as it had been to establish himself as O in the first place. All he really had to do was dust off his pretty little TCE and get one poor bloke out of his way. The hardest part, truly, was keeping his little disguise going in front of the Doctor. 

  
Not just one version of the Doctor, mind, and Eyebrows  _ had _ been harder to talk to than her latest body. Lucky for him, they didn’t see each other very often when she had been Eyebrows. He had been a bit preoccupied with the Master’s last body. She’d kept him busy with the tantalizing thought of redemption, of the possibility they could be  _ friends _ again. Not that it worked.    
  
It had been difficult to find a place to slide into the Doctor’s timeline in the first place. The Master had needed to find a newer version of his old friend that he wasn’t consistently around. Grabbing the Doctor when he was all bowties and genocide had seemed a logical solution. Sure, he’d been difficult to get used to, but the Master was up to the challenge.   
  
It was stupid, but the Master found himself feeling bad for the Doctor when he had lost one of his friends. Maybe it was due to how much the Doctor had lost. Maybe it was due to how close he had gotten to O over time, how much he trusted O. Or maybe it was a fault with this particular body.    
  
Whatever the reason, the Master felt sorry for his friend. He tried not to get too attached to how it felt to hold him in his arms as the Doctor cried. Tried not to get caught up in the memories of a boy named Koschei holding a boy named Theta as he cried over a particularly rough nightmare. Tried to separate the Master from O. 

The Master truly had no idea where he started and where O began. So much of O was a part of the Master that it simply wasn’t possible to separate the two without admitting far too many things to himself. Without separating the lies he had been telling himself from the lies he had told the Doctor, he wouldn’t be able to confidently say at what points he had been ‘O.’ 

The Master had tried his best to avoid lying to himself. Even when he wanted so hard to rekindle his friendship with the Doctor, even as he tried his best to be  _ good, _ he knew something had to give. Eventually, he would mess up, and the Doctor would go back to hating him. They’d go back to the way things always had been, since the day the Doctor had started running. The Master had been right, far more so than was comfortable to think about. It had been nice while it lasted, their friendship, and Missy had tried so hard for him.    
  
He still heard the screams. He’d been naive, really, thinking that they’d go away when he regenerated. The Master still saw the faces of the people he had killed every time he closed his eyes, still felt the guilt tearing away at him. Every time he tried to sleep, it was another death playing through his head like a broken record. Over and over and  _ over _ he watched them die.    
  
Not the Time Lords, though. No, they deserved it. Every last one of them had deserved to die. Their deaths didn’t haunt him. Their deaths didn’t make him want to run, didn’t make his skin crawl. The Master had spent hours thinking about all of the people he’d go back and stop himself from killing if he were given the chance, but he wouldn’t change a thing about what he’d done to Gallifrey. 

There were so many things he  _ would _ change, though, if only he had the chance. The list of things he would have stopped, the number of lives he would have saved from pointless deaths, the pain he could have prevented if he weren’t such a  _ coward- _ No. The Master wasn’t a coward, never had been, he was just afraid of losing  _ her. _

Looking back on it, it was always her. Ever since he had been a child, (but how old had she been?) his lives had practically revolved around her in some way or another. Be it protecting her or running away from his past, she was still… there. She’d always been there, in a way, stuck to him like a shadow. Every project he’d done for her because she hadn’t planned ahead, every perfect plan she had  _ torn _ apart- Even when she was breaking his hearts, he still loved her.   
  
Not that it mattered, of course. His oldest friend, his  _ best _ friend- She’d never trust him, not really. Not the way he trusted her, so completely and with all of his hearts. He’d always been nothing to her, worth less than the dirt under her boots, and she’d always been… the reason for his existence. Not that he’d known, when he was a child, but now that he did? 

That he was a product of the pain she had gone through haunted him far more than the people he’d killed. That the lives he had led, and the ones he’d taken, were only possible because of the tears she had cried  _ destroyed _ him. And she  _ had  _ to have cried, hadn’t she? She had been experimented on day after day for… he had no idea how long, but she’d been a  _ child _ when they had started. The Doctor was stronger than him in almost every way, to the point she was practically a  _ god _ in comparison to him, and she’d been reduced to nothing more than a science experiment to further the growth of a species she probably hadn’t even known the name of. They had taken  _ so _ much from her, and she hadn’t a clue. 

Maybe it was for the best, that she remained clueless as to her true past. The Master had no idea who the woman he loved would have became if those memories never left her head, but he knew he wouldn’t have liked it. Knew  _ she _ wouldn’t have liked it. The Doctor had already been through far more than he would ever be able to comprehend, and she already despised herself without even knowing the majority of her past. 

Briefly, the Master considered the possibility that the reason she wasn’t able to walk away from a crying child was due to how many people had walked past her when  _ she _ had been in their shoes. Maybe, subconsciously, she was remembering how lonely, how  _ scared _ , she had been.    
  
How lonely  _ had _ she been? How  _ scared? _ How long had she gone without sleep for fear of the nightmares taking her over without somebody to comfort her? How many times had  _ he _ turned down the chance to comfort her out of spite? How many times had she cried thinking of how cruel he had been to her? Surely, he didn’t want to know the answers to those questions. They’d break him, he was certain. 

Even now, memories began flooding through his head. Things he had done, words he had said, the way he had  _ meant _ them-

  
He hated himself. Truly hated every part of his being, more than he ever had before. His entire body was filled with so much rage. Not at her, never at her, but at the people who had caused his Doctor so much  _ pain  _ before she was even a teenager. At the people who had taken so much from her and given her  _ nothing. _

The Master included himself in that list, included the Time Lords he had killed in her name, even if he hadn’t known her when she was truly a child. He had grown up with her, gone to the Academy with her, but she hadn’t grown up with him. Not that she knew, not yet, but she would soon. He just needed to prepare himself. Needed to get ready to see the look on her face, the  _ hatred _ she’d feel for him the moment he told her.    
  
Not that it mattered. She despised him. Even when he had been Missy, she hadn’t actually wanted their friendship back. She hadn’t trusted him to keep to his word, and he’d only gone and proved her right. She’d never want to see him again, not once she found out the truth. 

He considered not telling her, considered protecting her from the truth one last time, but he couldn’t. She deserved the truth, even if it hurt her beyond anything he had ever done to her before. This was just another choice he had to make for her, another sacrifice he made. So much of her past had been kept hidden from her, from  _ them. _ The Master couldn’t let it stay hidden, even if it meant admitting who he truly was. 

God, he couldn’t stand himself. He couldn’t stand that she was the reason he existed. The layers of self-hatred were piling up, and he knew what he had to do. Once he showed her who she truly was, who  _ he _ was, he’d get rid of the Time Lords forever. He’d make sure that that part of her past wouldn’t come back to haunt her anymore. Or maybe she’d do it for him? Would she find the strength to kill him, one last time? He hoped so. That would  _ truly _ be the perfect ending to their story.    
  


She deserved that. 

Something light hit the side of his head, and O was drawn out of his thoughts and back onto a worn out couch in a small flat in the center of London. 


	2. Chapter Two

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> O and the Master think about the past and suffer while eating biscuits.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy new year, lads! It's been a long time coming, but here's chapter two.

Right, okay, he was back to the real world. Back to being O. Back to pretending. Back to-   
  


Back to having custard cream crumbs everywhere, if the biscuit laying by his thigh was any indication of the state of his sitting room. Surely by now there were crumbs in his carpet as well, which meant he was going to have to clean. Considering this would be the second time that day he’d be cleaning up, the first being after he’d accidentally knocked over a mug of tea in the kitchen, O was positively  _ thrilled _ at the prospect of doing it again. Nevertheless, he was a bit confused as to why there’d be a biscuit on his sofa. It wasn’t as though he was a messy eater. Unless-   
  
Ah. 

It appeared as though the reason he’d be cleaning once again was making herself comfortable in the leather armchair he’d gotten two summers ago. She’d invited herself over for tea at half two. At half past five, she was still there, rambling about- something. He wasn’t sure of the exact nature of her ramblings, but they were rather loud and enthusiastic. He’d zoned out halfway through, but apparently his absence from the conversation had been noticed.

“Oi,” words muffled with half a biscuit still in her mouth, the Doctor began to pout, “d’you ignore every guest you have for tea? ‘S a bit rude, really, to go off and ignore me while I’m trying to tell a story. I can’t be  _ that _ boring, can I?” 

She wasn’t really upset. They’d both had a habit of zoning out in the middle of the other’s rambles, and that was okay because neither of them really minded in the end. It was easy for her to get trapped in the maze of her own mind as he told her about trivial human things that often had no real impact on the world in the end, and she spoke of things that most humans had no chance of understanding in the slightest without ending up with a massive headache at the end of it, so they continued on and occasionally they’d end up picking up snippets of information about something or other. 

His reply came easily. “Not every guest I have over for tea, dear, just the good ones. Anyway- you were saying? I promise I’ll listen this time.” Or he’d try his best, which was most certainly the thing about humans. They never stopped trying, like cockroaches in a way- Popping up all over the universe and never _ stopping.  _ Humans were so unlike any other species in that aspect, and it was almost admirable. Or, it would be, if the Time Lords hadn’t been genetically modified to do the exact same thing.

The Doctor hummed, swallowing the custard cream in her mouth before speaking again with the exact same grin she’d had on when she’d met him- O. When she’d met  _ O _ all those years ago, when she’d been a man with far too much on his mind and the fashion sense of a toddler at a wedding. Some things never changed, he supposed. “Right, well, I  _ was _ talking about the J’alarians, but I get the feeling you’re too stuck inside that big ol’ head of yours to listen to me anyways.  _ So, _ c’mon O! Penny for ‘em?”    
  


Trapped- He was trapped. Caught, like a deer in headlights. Surely, she’d find out now. Surely, she’d- Relax. He needed to relax. If he panicked, she’d figure him out, and how long had it been since it’d been properly difficult for him to mask his real emotions from her? This body was so  _ weird,  _ so full of emotions and thoughts he hadn’t had since he was a little boy. He  _ hated _ it. 

  
O’s expression remained relaxed. He shrugged nonchalantly, pushing aside his thoughts with a dismissive hum. The Doctor didn’t need to know what he was actually thinking, right? He could just lie to her. It wasn’t like she’d  _ know. _ “Oh, it’s nothing that’d interest you, Doctor. Just work stuff, really. Boring, even to me. Anyway, the J’alarians are the ones with the- the er-”    
  
His brows furrowed as he struggled to find the right words, gesturing to his eyes with his right hand as his nose scrunched up. Words were decidedly  _ not _ O’s forte, especially when it came to descriptors of aliens with elongated eyes that looked a good bit like bookshelves and seemed to glow in the night. 

The Master, were he to be describing the J’alarians  _ correctly, _ would have chosen a different descriptor. Maybe he’d have gone with something about the Hydronian Festival that was held every year in the largest city on the planet, maybe something about the carbon levels in their atmosphere being abnormally high in the Summer months, but he most  _ certainly _ would not have chosen to talk about facial features.    
  
If he were the Master, the Doctor would have teased him. She would have asked if he were losing his touch, would have called him ‘old man’ and he would have scowled at her for even  _ insinuating _ such a thing while holding back a laugh. If she were mixing up her species, and he were the Master, he would have corrected her without a second thought, as condescending as possible.    
  
He was not the Master, he was O, and O was Human. The Doctor treated her Humans far differently than she treated the Master. As much as he hated it, as jealous as it made him, he understood  _ why.  _   
  
  


A smile formed on the Doctor’s face, and she let out a slight giggle. “Nope! Those are the Ulaxians. I get why you’d think they were, though, considerin’ they look a bit similar.” She leaned forward, index finger pressed against her lips as she fought back a grin. “Don’t tell them I said that, O. I’ll lose my spot on the High Council.” 

  
  


Potential spot, that was, until she’d realized what sort of people the Ulaxians  _ were, _ but O didn’t know that. No, of course not. The Master did, though, and he was  _ absolutely _ going to have a laugh about it when she left. That was later. Currently, he was trying his best to avoid calling her out for exaggerating.    
  
O gave a slow nod, an eyebrow raised in mild disbelief. Not that she was watching, mind, as she was too busy getting up and pacing around the room. Poor Doctor. She’d never been good at sitting still for long. Neither had he, really, but he’d always been far better than her. “Right. Which ones are the J’alarians, then?”    
  
An opportunity to properly explain. She liked those, right? Surely, she’d go on for  _ ages _ about them, then, and then he could-    
  
“They’re the big baddies with the huge teeth.” The Doctor reminded him, popping another biscuit into her mouth as she walked. His last biscuit, if he had kept count, unless she’d moved on to her own stash. Quite possible, considering she seemed to have been craving them this regeneration. 

That wasn’t- He didn’t care about his biscuits, he just needed to be able to  _ think. _ _   
_ _   
_ Not that he’d been doing that to any real capacity since he’d stepped into the Matrix. His mind was so- so  _ full.  _ Thinking hurt. Thinking- He needed to stop. His mind was racing, and he couldn’t escape it. The Master was being pulled under, caught in the grasp of insanity, and she was pushing him under.   
  
Drowning- He was drowning. He was drowning. He was-    
  
He was calling her out for being vague. That was what he was doing.    
  
“Aren’t there, like, a billion different big bads with huge teeth, Doctor? That’s not very specific, I hope you know.” Teasing. He was teasing her, a dopey grin on his face with a mug of tea in his left hand.   
  
The Doctor, seemingly taking this as a challenge to her reputation, gave him a rather disapproving frown. “Oi, watch it. I know my species, they’re just… difficult to describe because all I can actually come up with are things you wouldn’t understand.”    
  
Realization dawned on his face, his lips forming an ‘o’ shape as he gave a slow nod. “Oh. I get it now, Doctor. You’re just bad at explaining things. Got it.” Was he smirking? Oh. He was- definitely smirking. Fun. “Or-  _ Or _ ,” and he was definitely grinning now, right index finger held up in the air as if to tell her to just  _ wait, _ “you’ve made up the bit about the Ulaxians because you wanted to feel smart.”    
  
Bingo.    
  
One of her hands went to her left heart, clutching the fabric of her shirt with slim fingers. Her jaw dropped slightly, and a pout wormed its way onto her face. “Ow. O, that was _ rude.  _ I’ll have you know that some of my  _ best _ friends are Ulaxian.”    
  
The Master doubted that. The Ulaxians were a warrior race that were demolished in the year three thousand after a civil war broke out that spanned across the entire planet. The Doctor wanted nothing to do with them, and she never would. There was a  _ possibility _ that she’d checked them out once or twice, but the Ulaxians were born and bred to  _ fight.  _ They stood for everything the Doctor  _ didn’t. _   
  
But O believed her. Of course he did, because O  _ always _ believed the things the Doctor said. He trusted her, and in return she had trusted him. It was almost pitiful, how easy it had been for O to become close to her. She’d spent far too long with her guard down, but that wouldn’t last much longer.    
  
“Right, sorry. Of course. Wasn’t my intention to doubt your brilliance.” His hands were raised, a clear gesture to show that he had meant no harm. O was backing down, as Humans tended to do so frequently, showing her that she’d won. How long had it been since she’d  _ truly _ won? 

  
The boost to her ego must have worked, because she dropped her offended expression and traded it for a look of consideration.She hummed, sitting back down in the chair before speaking properly. “Apology accepted, I suppose. Now, where was I? Oh- right! So, as I was talking to Galdo…”    
  
The rest of the Doctor’s story fell on deaf ears. She didn’t notice, though. The Master had always been good at keeping himself looking interested in a conversation he was  _ not _ listening to, he’d just- he’d slipped up earlier, was all. To her, O was listening intently, nodding to show his understanding and laughing when appropriate, but the man behind O’s kind brown eyes was lost to his own raging ocean of thoughts.    
  


The Master’s mind was a roaring sea filled with monstrous waves slamming into his brains thought after  _ thought _ after  **_thought,_ ** crashing over him with memories of events long since passed that had seemed to crush his very soul. The waves knocked him around, pushing him down and blocking him from any chance of escape.    
  
He fought for air, for a reprieve from the hurricane that was his own mind, but the longer it went on the further he was dragged down into the water. He tried going under, looking for a break from the waves that tore through everything in their path, but he was pulled back to the surface of his mind just long enough to breathe before being slammed back down.    
  
It was as if he’d forgotten how to swim, had dived in without thought and let himself be overtaken by the waves. The longer he fought the more energy was drained out of him. The Master was exhausted, he had spent so long trying to stay afloat that he hadn’t the energy to remember why he’d gotten himself into the situation in the first place. He was a child again, fighting against the raging currents of his own mind, and watching him drown from the surface was  _ her. _

~   
  
_ Beatbeatbeatbeat beatbeatbeatbeat beatbeatbeat-  _ _   
_ _   
_ “Gah!” The sound of glass shattering flooded through the room, causing the man in front of him to flinch. Even like this, even at his mercy, the Doctor couldn’t bring himself to understand. “Why can’t you hear that? Why is it just me?” The Master was screaming again. He knew he was screaming, but he couldn’t bring himself to care. His voice would be strained by the end of the day, but it wouldn’t matter. He just wanted the pain to end. 

_  
__The Master was on fire. He was trapped in a blazing inferno, trying desperately to escape the neverending twists and turns of his own mind but running into wall after wall after_ ** _wall._** _Attempts to retrace his steps, to go back to where his madness had begun, had only made the drums worse. His head was burning, thought after thought popping into his mind and refusing to_ ** _leave._** _  
__  
__There was no escape, he realized. Not from his thoughts, not from the memories, not from the Doctor. At the end of every hallway, at the start of the labyrinth of his past, at every_ ** _failure_** _was him. The harder he fought against it, the more distance he tried to create between them, the clearer it became._ _  
_ _  
_ _At every point in his lives, the Doctor had been there. Not always in person, sometimes just in thought, but he’d always been in the Master’s head. Every choice he’d made as a child had been to spare_ ** _him._** _He’d been foolish, to live in ignorance with the belief that the Doctor was his best friend. Reality had struck, and it had struck like a match that caused a spark greater than any he’d ever seen and set fire to_ ** _millenia_** _that plagued his mind at every waking second. The flames rose higher and higher as more fuel was added to the fire, and watching the Master burn was_ ** _him._** _  
  
_

_ ~ _

Quiet- the room was so _quiet._ Her ears were ringing, and while the drums in her head were gone the beating of her hearts had only gotten easier to hear. At least it blended into the background when there was _noise,_ but it wasn’t fair. The silence was deafening, the urge to scream bubbling up her throat at every waking second, and _he_ was there, taunting her- Testing her. She was being tested.   
  
No.   
  
She wasn’t being tested, she was being trapped- trapped in the Vault bound to the promise _she_ had made, her promise to be _good._ Good or bad, evil or not, freedom or _him-_ they were all choices, and she’d made so many awful choices in her past. Except for one:  
  
Missy had chosen _him._  
  
Or, rather, she’d chosen _them,_ after so many years of having chosen herself- after so long spent choosing freedom.   
  
Except he hadn’t chosen her. No, he’d chosen himself. He’d distanced himself from her as much as he could, and she could see in his eyes during every visit- could hear in his words that he didn’t believe in her. He’d just tossed her in the Vault, and treated her like a prisoner, and Missy was-   
  
Screaming. Missy was screaming. Her throat was sore, the echoes of her cries for _somebody_ to just make it _stop_ reverberating throughout the Vault and crashing into her wave after wave after _wave._ Tears were streaming down her face as she curled herself into a ball in the furthest corner in the room from the door, fighting back the urge to pull at her hair. Long lost had been the battle to keep herself from breaking. She wanted it to stop, wanted to be able to _think._ _  
  
_

It wouldn’t cease. Her own screams echoed those of the people she had killed, her own cries for help infinitesimal in comparison to theirs. Faces ran through her mind, flashed behind her eyelids, tortured her. Countless families, broken apart by  _ her,  _ letting loose a cacophony of cries for help in her mind that wouldn’t  _ stop.  _

  
Missy was crying- she was screaming, begging, but-    
  
Her pleads fell upon deaf ears, just as theirs had done so many times, and she understood then how it felt to be at the mercy of somebody who didn’t  _ care. _ As memories flooded into her head, tormented her at every moment, waking or otherwise, she screamed. 

Just behind the door, listening to her cries but never bothering to help, stood the one man who had the ability to take the pain away. He would never help her. She knew that more than he ever would, understood his mistrust. Just behind the door, behind the cries in her head and the tears in her eyes, stood  _ him. _   
  
~   
  
Drowning.   
  
**Burning.**   
  
_ Begging. _

_ ~ _

His hands were bloodied, both with the blood of his most recent and the blood of those he had killed in the past. The exact number had escaped him, but maybe he’d stopped counting when he’d stopped killing to stave off the boredom. It was no longer a game, his death count no longer a trophy to be hung up on a wall.   
  
The Master’s knuckles were bruised, his ankle surely broken and his face torn by shrapnel, but he felt no pain. Adrenaline was rushing through his brain, synapses firing and leaving him _feeling_ alive, but he was a walking corpse. His skin was pale, movement just clumsy enough to be a burden. He was tripping, but _why?_ His head was burning, brain foggy- he couldn’t _think._   
  
Or, rather, he wasn’t thinking of the right things. The Master’s thoughts were focused on memories, on the only thing he could think of without his vision going blurry. Not his memories- _Hers._

  
Always hers- always  _ her. _ Behind every locked door, every memory pushed to the back of his head, every tear, was  _ her,  _ and maybe that was how it had always meant to be. Maybe it had never been  _ them.  _ After all, he’d always been in the background, lurking, no matter how hard he had tried to stay right alongside her.    
  
She stood out-the Doctor demanded attention at every point in time, and she  _ got it. _ From the moment she had walked into his lives, she had had his attention. As much as he tried to pretend otherwise, she stole his breath and captured his hearts, and she  _ owned _ his attention.    
  
She’d never wanted it from him. No, she wanted it from  _ O, _ unaware of who he really was, unaware of the war raging behind his eyes. Always wanted attention from her Humans, always wanted to be able to show off.   
  
Well, she had his attention. Had O’s heart, right from the very beginning. He’d given it up so willingly, so  _ perfectly _ , the daft little thing. 

The Master had fallen for the same trap O had fallen to, had gotten ensnared in the whirlwind of her lives a very long time ago. He’d fallen for the Doctor, and he’d done it so long ago that it wasn’t even- he hadn’t been the Master, not then.    
  
A very long time ago, on a planet that now lay a barren wasteland, Theta Sigma had stolen Koschei’s hearts, and the Master hadn’t even tried to get them back. He’d let himself be taken apart by the Doctor, had fallen victim to the dangers of love.    
  
But she hadn’t cared.   
  
A very long time ago, they had trusted each other. Theta Sigma had fought for Koschei’s attention, had tried his hardest to prove himself to his best friend, back when they still believed in fairytales.    
  
A very long time ago, a boy named Koschei had sworn to protect his best friend until the day he died, and the Master had kept to that. Maybe he’d gone a very roundabout way of doing it, but the Doctor had been saved.    
  
A very long time ago, a boy named Koschei had kissed a boy named Theta against a wall on their way to class.    
  


**He was the last Time Lord.**


	3. Chapter Three

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Master has always been trapped in his own head. Memories come in the form of dreams, replacing the nightmares he'd dealt with all his lives.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's been a little longer than I'd hoped, but here's chapter three!

The Master had always been aware of his dreams. Had always known that, despite how very real his mind had made them, none of it was happening. But, with his legs dangling over the edge of a cliff and the palms of his hands resting against red grass, dampened by a rainstorm that couldn’t have passed more than five minutes prior, he was almost willing to let himself get lost in this one. Twin suns were descending into the horizon, illuminating silver leaves blowing in a gentle breeze that jostled his hair and brushed against his cheek as soft as a mother’s kiss. Not that he’d ever known how that felt. 

He let his eyes close, losing himself in the moment for what seemed like forever, only to have his trance interrupted by the sound of branches snapping and two pairs of footsteps rapidly approaching him. His eyes shot open, only to be greeted by the sight of two boys, one chasing after the other as they both panted heavily. In their hands were sabres, the sort used for fencing but misused by children as pirate swords, the very sort of children which ran in front of him now. 

The Master could have sworn he remembered this day, knew it without a doubt to be one of his favourite memories from his time during the Academy, but for the life of him couldn’t put together the entire picture in his mind. He knew there was meant to be some sort of conversation between the two boys, but he couldn’t hear the words that made them both burst into laughter. There was no reason to bother with telepathy here. As far as they were concerned, they were alone.

It was an odd feeling, watching one of his own memories as an outsider. Nearly as odd as when he’d been poking around in the Matrix. There was an interesting voyeuristic aspect to it, despite knowing the dream was one of his own memories, as though this were a private moment that he was intruding on. 

Except it was, wasn’t it? As children, they’d spent countless hours running through long grass, just the two of them. They’d taken comfort in the privacy of the open air, miles away from the Citadel and free from the Academy. In these fields, they were at peace. It was only natural he’d feel like an outsider, when he was watching such a very private and personal event unfold without even a clue as to when they’d happened.

One of the boys, Koschei, swung at his friend, who immediately jumped back in an attempt to dodge the attack. Theta, who’d been fighting at a disadvantage given that Koschei had positioned himself on top of the hill they were fighting on now and that Theta was currently having to deal with fighting on an incline, went to swing his makeshift pirate sword and found himself losing his footing. Just as quickly as he’d ran into the area, Theta was rolling down the hill, towards the very cliff the Master had been sitting at the edge of. 

Koschei, who had always prided himself on his lightning quick reaction times, couldn’t react quickly enough to stop his friend from tumbling towards the edge. If the Master hadn’t finally figured out when this memory had taken place, he would have assumed that Theta actually would have gone over the edge. However, just as he’d come to the conclusion that it’d been just before one of the few fights they’d had when they were kids, Koschei grabbed on to Theta’s arm, holding on to the boy by the collar of his coat as he struggled to pull himself back onto solid ground. The boy’s feet were kicking off chunks of dirt from the cliffside, and the Master watched as rocks tumbled down onto the ground below. 

Moments later, Theta was pulled to his feet and promptly forced into a hug. Koschei hadn’t been big on physical contact, the Master never had, but he’d been so scared. He’d nearly lost his friend, right there, and he’d not known what to do. Koschei hadn’t known then how many times he’d be the reason he’d nearly lose his friend later on. At this point, the Master had stopped caring.

Before the two split apart, Koschei whispered something in Theta’s ear. The Master couldn’t remember what he’d said, but he knew the sort of tone he’d said it in. Even now, the Master could see how hard he’d been trying not to cry. He’d been trying to hide a scared little boy away from his best friend. Theta had never noticed. And how could he have? 

Every second of every day, Koschei had dedicated most of his energy to hiding away his feelings, to making sure he didn’t scare Theta away by getting too personal. Theta had just assumed that was the sort of person he was, and maybe he’d been right, but not for the reasons Theta had thought. The Master had lost so much over the years, had let people go that he’d never wanted to admit to himself that he needed in his lives. At one point, he’d blamed that on the drums. 

Maybe the drums had been the thing to push him over the edge, but it was never really about them. The drums were always there, a constant in his lives that he’d never thought he’d needed, and they’d been maddening, but the drums were never the issue. Even before the drums, before the steady beat of onetwothreefour every second of his lives, he’d still been the same. Or maybe he hadn’t. 

It became hard, after a while, to remember a time when the drums hadn’t been there, to remember a time when his mind had been quiet. A Time Lord’s mind was always loud, yes, filled to the brim with thoughts and feelings and other Time Lords, but that all blurred into nothing, into static. Telepathy had a way of numbing the mind to the overwhelming, to the too much.

And then it had been taken over.

One two three four. 

Everything that was too much went away, was overpowered by the drums, and that had been too much. 

One two three four.

Static. Replaced by the sound of war, by the sound of his hearts beating, neverending. 

Onetwothree-

And then it had stopped.

The boys left the field in silence after that, hand in hand until they met the trees. As they looked back to the field, eyes scanning over the area together, they looked older. Their features seemed to shift with the surrounding area, and all the sudden he was sitting with his back pressed against the vault door. 

In front of him, an argument was taking place, and honestly there had been far too many of those for him to be able to judge when this had been. They had never really argued, had never yelled at each other, but their words had been laced with poison from the beginning. Especially Missy, who had held so much contempt for the man she’d trusted and loved more than anything else. 

To an outsider, neither person had appeared to show emotion, but even without being able to hear what was being said it had been clear that the argument had become heated. Whatever they had been saying had gone from a simple back and forth to a proper fight, each participant responding quickly without really giving any time for their words to truly sink in. And then something had been said, by the Mistress, which resulted in a pause in their battle. For a moment, the Master wondered if it had felt good to deliver the last blow. 

Both parties seemed to be struggling to keep their composure, but Koschei had always been better at hiding his emotions than Theta. That difference translated easily to their adulthood. The Master watched as his friend calmly walked out of the vault, and he felt nothing as the door was shut behind him. The silence in the room was obvious, deafening despite his inability to hear how the room truly sounded, but he knew in his heart that not a sound was made. It took Missy all of three seconds before she began crying, and then he remembered the argument.

It had started simple, as a conversation about how Missy really ought to start being nice to Nardole because he was just doing what he could for the Doctor, but then Missy had commented on the fact that she rarely saw him at all, on the fact that it felt like she was being babysat by something hardly smarter than an infant. The Doctor hadn’t taken kindly to that, had reminded her that there was a reason she needed to be babysat in the first place. He had said that if she had learned to behave in the first place, none of this would have been necessary. 

Except none of it had been necessary in the first place. She had agreed to stay on Earth, in the Vault, for however long it took. He had agreed to stay with her, had agreed to watch over her and keep her out of trouble. He couldn’t stop her from getting into trouble, and she had been certain that a part of himself knew that just as well as she knew he wasn’t going to stay on Earth, but still he tried. 

He had put restrictions on her from the beginning, had locked her in and told her to be a good girl and had told her to behave. It had been demeaning, in a way, knowing that he still tried to maintain control despite both of them understanding that she could go whenever she wanted to. Missy hadn’t been stupid enough to believe that he didn’t know she could leave. He may have underestimated her, but she was determined to ensure that she did no such thing to him. She mentioned feeling like a prisoner, despite being there willingly, and he had stated that there was a good reason for that as well.

Her hearts had sank at that, at the realization that he had been keeping his distance because he was just waiting for the other shoe to drop. If he expected this to fail, why were they still there? Had he been waiting for her to prove what they’d known all along? They had come in, with the expectation that even if she was locked away in the vault she was not a prisoner. They were meant to be on equal footing. 

He never saw it that way. Right from the beginning, Theta had always believed himself to be better than Koschei, even if Koschei proved himself superior in just about every way, but Theta had always had the moral high ground. A part of Missy had understood this, but she still fought to be the person that the Doctor had always wanted her to be. All Missy had wanted was her friend back, just as the Doctor had wanted when the Master had been prime minister. But they were doomed to fail, and the Doctor knew that. Maybe that revelation in itself was what caused her to start doubting. Despite her doubts, the Mistress fought tooth and nail to be somebody she could never be. All she had ever wanted was for them to be equal in some way. 

They had never been equal. The Master realized that now, realized that it hadn’t really been his fault that they could never stand together. The Doctor had always been different, and they’d both felt it, but neither of them wanted to admit it. He just hadn’t realized just how deeply the seeds of Missy’s failure had been sown. 

He’s pulled away from the scene in front of him, into a room that was almost blinding in how it overwhelmed his senses. He smelled blood, heard the screams of a child in pain, felt the warmth from sunlight that both set him on fire and kept cold the ice in his hearts as he realized where he was. 

For a moment, he was so overwhelmed that he nearly started checking to make sure he was wearing a perception filter, but then his thoughts cleared up. He was dreaming, he knew it was just an extraordinarily vivid part of the dream, but at the same time he felt as though he was being tortured. He could think, but he couldn’t breathe. Seeing his best friend infront of him, so far away from the woman he knew now, it had nearly knocked him awake. 

And now his hearts were burning, he was on fire with pure rage at the scene in front of him, but he couldn’t move. He watched as a needle was poked through his friend’s skin, watched as blood was drawn and set aside. He watched as the child, alone and scared, was used as a lab rat. It felt as though it went on for hours, test after test after test. 

And then he was moved again, to face that same child in the middle of a desert, just as scared, just as alone, crawling in the sand because they couldn’t gather the strength to stand. He watched on as the child exploded into a ball of light, and then watched as the child began walking again to a destination unknown. 

He watched as a person walked up to the child, with a kind smile and an outstretched hand. He watched as the person introduced themselves as Tectun, as they said they could help, and then the scene in front of him changed while he screamed out for his friend. 

It’s time to stand with the Doctor, because he’s right. 

It’s where we’ve always been going. 

Blood. A stab wound. A gunshot. 

The last thing he saw before he woke up was fire.


End file.
